Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

final smile at Merrial opened
the door and stepped out into the cock-crowing sunlight.
     
    and she threw her arms around him that same
night she drew him down.

 
2
Ancient Time
     
     
    Death follows me, she thought, as she rode into the
labour-camp. There was something implacable about it, like logic:
it follows, it follows… The thought’s occurrence had
nothing to do with logic; it appeared like a screensaver on the
surface of her mind, whenever her mind went blank. It troubled
her a little, as did another thought that drifted by in such
moments: where are the swift cavalry?
    The gate rolled shut behind her, squealing in its rusty
grooves. The wind from the steppe hummed in the barbed-wire fence
and whipped away the dust kicked up as she reined in the black
horse. A guard hurried over; he somehow managed to make his brisk
soldierly step look obsequious, even as his bearing made his
dark-blue microfibre fatigues look military. He doffed a baseball
cap with the Mutual Protection lettering and logo.
    ‘ Good morning, Citizen.’
    That title was already an honorific. Myra Godwin-Davidova
smiled and handed him the reins.
    ‘Good morning,’ she said, swinging down fromthe
horse. She could hear her knee-joints creak. She lifted the
saddlebags and slung them over her shoulder. The weight almost
made her stagger, and the guard’s arm twitched towards her;
but she wasn’t going to accept any help from that quarter.
‘That will be all, thank you.’
    ‘As you wish, Citizen.’ The guard saluted and
replaced his cap. She was still looking down at him, her
riding-boots adding three inches to her five-foot-eleven
height.
    She patted the big mare’s rump and watched as the guard
led the beast away, then set off towards the accommodation huts.
As she walked she pulled off her leather gauntlets and stuffed
them awkwardly into the deep pockets of her long fur coat, and
tucked a stray strand of silver hair under her sable hat. Hands
mottled, veins showing, nails ridged: tough claws of an old bird,
still flexible, but a better indication of her true age than her
harshly lined but firm face, straight back and limber stride. Her
knees hurt, but she tried not to let it show, or slow her
down.
    The camp perimeter was about one kilometre by two. Beyond the
far fence she could see straight to the horizon, above which rose
the many gantries and the few remaining tall ships of the old
port. It had been a proud fleet once. How long before she would
have to say, all my ships are gone and all my men are
dead?
    As if to mock her thought, a small ship screamed overhead; she
caught a glimpse of it: angular, faceted, translucent, a spectral
stealth-bomber shrieking skyward from Baikonur on a jet of
laser-heated steam. The trail’s after-image floated
irritatingly in front of her as she turned her gaze resolutely
back to earth.
    One of the camp’s factories was a couple of hundred
metres away, a complex of aluminium pipework and fibre-optic
cabling in a queasily organic-looking mass about fifty metres
wide and twenty high, through which the control cabins and
walkways of the human element were beaded and threaded like the
eggs and exudate of some gargantuan insect. The name of the
company that owned it, Space Merchants, was spelled out on the
roof in twisty neon.
    As she approached the nearest workers’ housing area it
struck Myra, not for the first time, that the huts were more
modern and comfortable than the concrete apartment block she
lived in herself. Each hut was semi-cylindrical, its rounded ends
streamlined to the prevailing wind; soot-black polycarbon skin
with rows of laminated-diamond windows.
    This particular cluster of accommodation huts was in two rows
of ten, with the rutted remains of a twenty metre-wide paved road
between them. A gang of a dozen men was engaged in repairing the
road; the breeze carried a waft of sweat and tar. The men were
using shovels, a gas burner under a tipping-and-spreading
contraption, and a coughing diesel-engined road-roller:
primitive, heavy equipment. On the sidewalk a blue-suited Mutual
Protection guard lounged, picking his teeth and apparently
watching a show in his eyes and hearing music or commentary in
his ears.
    The loom of Myra’s shadow made him jump, blink and shake
his head with a small shudder. He started to his feet.
    ‘No need to get up,’ Myra said unkindly. ‘I
just want to speak to some of the